


There Ought to be Clowns (maybe next year)

by ShadowsOffense



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Soul Bond, Timey-Wimey, Trope Subversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 15:10:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2392946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsOffense/pseuds/ShadowsOffense
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soulmate AU (but <b>not</b> a human AU).  Everyone is born with a timer, counting down until they meet their soulmate.  Simple in theory.  The problem is that while humans look at time as a liner progression from A to B, time is complicated.  </p><p>The problem is, when he was taken out of his loom on Gallifrey, the Doctor’s counter already was at zero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Ought to be Clowns (maybe next year)

There were no unauthorized entries to the maternity ward and no one, _no one_ , had had their counters hit zero while within telepathic range of the child’s loom, much less had physical contact. Yet, when he was taken out, the counter on his wrist was already at zero. No one could explain how an unborn child could have already met his soulmate. Met them and therefore lost them. 

That was the tragedy of it.

The child, himself, had tried once to solve it, when he was sat down and had it explained to him by solemn faced adults. “Maybe if I just go back,” he’d said, hopeful and eager and clever and _scared_. “I can meet them before I am born!”

“It doesn’t work like that, Theta.” A hand had been placed on his shoulder, sad brown eyes and a firm grip. “The timers are based on your personal timeline relative to the causal nexus in the Vortex. It doesn’t matter when in time you go, the countdown is for a moment in your _personal_ time stream.” He’d opened his mouth to protest and the hand squeezed his shoulder harder. Comforting and ruthless. Out of _pity_. “No, Theta. Time travel does not affect the counters.”

He’d tried it anyway. Stolen a Tardis. Ran to the beginning of time and close to the end. Out of desperation he had dropped randomly in and out of history, hitting here and there and never had his counter changed. Zero. Always zero.

But he didn’t stop. Traveling like that, he really saw things, changed things.

In his eighth regeneration he found someone who had missed her soulmate too. He had met others like himself before, in that their counters were at zero, but they were alone. There was always a _reason_ for it, though. Their soulmate had died, or the meeting had been missed in a large crush of people, or on opposite sides of a war. The Doctor (Theta called himself this now) had never been tempted to try and find happiness with one of them before. In his eighth regeneration, perhaps it was giving up, but it was also hope, also _trying_.

It ended badly. Of course it did. They had cared for each other, maybe even loved, but they were not meant to be together. There was only one way it could end.

Then the war. Gallifrey burned and the Doctor left dreams of love behind.

Ironically, in the aftermath of that tragedy, the greatest tragedy he had ever witnessed, and in the midst of still more blood and death and fire, he’d met Rose Tyler. This silly little human. This fantastic little human. He’d taken her hand the moment her counter had hit zero. Just him and her and the Nestene and her soulmate wasn’t a murderous blob of plastic was it? But it couldn’t be him, either. 

Just friends, just mates. Yet she was kind and funny and good. And then he’d lost her and found her and made a duplicate metacrisis of himself and then he’d _understood_.

Because his counter, the **other** him’s counter _wasn’t at zero_. It was counting down, already with only minutes, then seconds.

There had been tears in the Doctor’s eyes and his own face looked at him with the same pity he’d seen so long ago on Gallifrey. “Take his hand Rose,” the Doctor had told her, looking away from his own eyes to see her face one last time. “Don’t you see? Your counter hit zero when we met because he is me, but I’m not him. Take his hand.”

The Doctor’s heart had truly broken then, because he had _loved_ Rose. Both of him had. Stupid, thick, foolish him. But it had been good. His whole life had, really. Not having a soulmate hadn’t changed that.

But it was almost over. Regenerating for the last time. A young face, but old. So, so old.

Then River, the mysterious Professor Song, was alive. Was back. Her flirting and her teasing and her zero counter. But there was always sadness in her eyes and he figured, maybe, maybe she had lost her soulmate too. They’d died or missed or something. Because while River’s eyes were sad, there was never pity in them. Only understanding. 

The Doctor had thought the flirting and the teasing was a way to ease her loneliness, the way it was for Jack. He wasn’t interested, but he liked her. And hated her in about equal measure.

“Is she Mrs. Doctor from the future?” Amy had asked, excited and meddling and _evil_. “She is, isn’t she!”

“No Amy. I told you,” he stopped speaking for a moment to make himself sound less angry. “I told you,” he tried again. “I haven’t met my soulmate. I was just,” the Doctor shifted uncomfortably. “Born this way.”

“Don’t be silly, everyone meets their soulmate.”

“Well, not _me!_ ” He’d shouted, stomping away. Mr. Grumpy Face indeed.

He’d left River in the hands of her wardens at her own request, but they had kept stumbling over one another and did Professor, Dr., _whatever_ Song ever spend any time in that prison of theirs?!

“The next time we met, you find out who I am,” she told him. “And I’m sorry Doctor, but that is when everything changes.”

And then there was Amy, kidnapped and in a hospital gown and tears and an empty cradled. “Doctor,” she’d grabbed his wrist. “There was something wrong. Her counter, her counter was at zero.”

“I’m sorry Amy.” He’d said. “I’m so, so sorry.” Because that child, little Melody, was doomed to a life like his. But not to the Silence. She wouldn’t be doomed to **that**. “But I will find her. I swear to you, I will find her.”

He’d meant it, but River stopped him. River and River again and River was Melody and he’d _wondered_. River with her flirting and her zero counter. River like him in ways that no one else in all of time and space was like him. But he hadn’t hoped. The Doctor was too afraid to hope. River with her sadness. River with her understanding. 

And, in the end, it was his last regeneration and it was time. The Doctor’s death was a fixed point and he could only put it off so long. He hadn’t expected River to smirk and turn the Universe inside out. The Universe! Inside out! _Because she loved him!_

Because she’d loved him, brave and defiant of the zeros on her wrist (she was amazing, what had she been thinking?). Because she loved him, the entirety of time and space had been collapsed into a single moment that was every moment.

It had to end, or existence itself would. He was old and slow and thick and he understood all of it at last.

“I love you,” River told him. “And so many others love you. You are the most loved man in the Universe. And you don’t get to die without knowing it.”

“I do,” he’d said. Because he finally did know it. He held up his wrist so she could see his counter, steadily at zero. “This moment exists across all of time and space. Every instant is this instant.”

“The moment we touch,” she’d said with awe and sorrow.

“The moment we _bond,_ ” he’d corrected.

“The moment you _die._ ”

It was funny. Born with his counter at zero, but with a soulmate he wouldn’t really meet until the moment of his death. But the greater tragedy was River’s.

He hadn’t been planning to clue her into this last escape from death. He had thought he’d let the Doctor die and he’d retire somewhere quiet. Maybe curate a library. Run a museum. River, older River, had always looked at him with such sadness. The best man she had ever met.

Their hands glowed golden as they touched. Bonded. Killed and died. In theory, it was simple.

“River,” the Doctor said. “Look in my eyes.”


End file.
